Paddy Agnewon how the Old Lady's past reputation may well be coming back to haunt her

So then, over the weekend Juventus were involved in a match decided by two "dodgy" penalties. So, what else is new? The curious aspect of last weekend's Napoli v Juventus game, however, was that, whereas in the past Juventus regularly seemed to benefit from dubious decisions, this time it was the "Old Lady" who lost out.

In effect, Juventus were beaten 3-1 by Napoli, thanks primarily to two poor penalty decisions against them by the 36-year-old referee Mauro Bergonzi.

With a tight game evenly balanced at 1-1, referee Bergonzi unwittingly became the villain of the piece as he awarded Napoli penalties in the 63rd and 70th minutes, penalties the defender Maurizio Domizzi blasted home with total assurance.

The point about both penalty decisions, however, is that endless slow-motion replays over the weekend appeared to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that neither should have been awarded.

In the first instance, the Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini was first to the ball in a fair tackle on the new Napoli "star", the Argentinian Ezequel Lavezzi.

In the second instance, just seven minutes later, Napoli's Uruguayan and ex-Juventus striker Marcelo Zalayeta took a spectacular dive as he and the Juve goalkeeper Gigi Buffon went for a 50-50 ball.

Moreover, Bergonzi will not officiate in this week's matches and looks set to be dropped for a longer period after wrongly awarding the two penalties against Juventus.

The referee has not been selected for any of tonight's Serie B games or tomorrow's Serie A matches, the Italian Soccer Federation website said.

Media reports have said the referees' chief, Pierluigi Collina, could ban Bergonzi for as much as a month and then keep him in Serie B for longer.

Zalayeta has been banned for two games for his dive, the Italian league said in a statement.

There are some important conclusions to be drawn in the wake of Napoli's much-needed victory. First, the newly promoted Napoli are back in Serie A with a bang. Second, given the wholesale involvement of Juventus in the "Calciopoli" match-fixing scandal of the summer of 2006, it seems the wheel may have turned full circle. Are referees going out of their way to make sure no one can accuse them of favouring Juventus in any way? And third, we can expect to hear much more about video referees in the coming months in Italy, and not just in Italy.

The recently concluded Rugby World Cup has clearly injected fresh life into the vexed debate about the use of video replays in football. French rugby fans and millions of television viewers saw for themselves just how rugby has come to terms with consistent recourse to the video referee in the context of difficult decisions.

Partly in response to that, the Uefa president, Michel Platini, just 10 days ago was quick to rule out any such recourse in football. It might work well in rugby (and indeed in basketball and fencing) but it would be "the death" of football: "Video referees would destroy football . . . If we had this, in 10 years' time we would no longer have any referees, refereeing would be over forever and we would have to use a video . . . In my view, the video is a big problem. You would have to stop the game every 10 seconds for every decision that is questioned . . . Football is a human game and the mistakes are human . . ."

Intriguingly, not everyone sees it the same way as Platini.

Napoli's president, Aurelio De Laurentis, ironically the beneficiary of that "human error" last Saturday night, put it this way: "You've got to have the video replays, the video referee, at least for penalty decisions. When the federation finally decides to introduce replays, then you will kill off all forms of speculation."

After Saturday's game, De Laurentis sportingly apologised to Juventus, acknowledging the refereeing had been just a tad lopsided. For his part, the Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri, on a Sunday night football chat show, admitted he had expected referees to be particularly hard on Juventus in this "return" season in Serie A, but added that things were now "unacceptable".

"There's no plot against us but it's obvious that we're not treated the same as other teams. The fact is that these young referees, whenever they are unsure, just blow against us, and that way no one links them to all the old stories of the past.

"The golden rule used to be that, when in doubt, you blow in favour of the defence. In our case, when in doubt, you blow against Juventus," said Ranieri.

In the short term, the defeat in Naples prompted some extreme responses from the Juventus fans. As the match ended, some of them were calling for the recall of Luciano Moggi, the former Juventus director banned from football because of his dominant role in the "Calciopoli" match-fixing scandal.

Then too, a Juventus fan website within 24 hours of the game had organised a petition, signed by more than 2,000 fans, calling for referee Bergonzi to be banned for life.

In the longer term, the video-technology debate will run and run. Clearly, such technology would almost certainly have induced referee Bergonzi to make very different decisions last weekend. Clearly, too, such technology can be hair-splitting - as in the English try disallowed in the Rugby World Cup final.

Indeed, English sports fans could rightly claim they got the worst of both worlds earlier this month when the absence of a video referee cost England dearly in a Euro 2008 qualifier against Russia (another dubious penalty call), whilst the presence of the said video referee cost them a try in that final against South Africa.

Be that as it may, what is for sure is that we will be hearing more of this issue this winter.